VANCOUVER Brock McGinn Jersey Kids , British Columbia — The old adage about wine does not apply to the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames.While a bottle of red or white might get better with age, the Canucks and Flames believe they can only get better with youth. The predominantly young clubs, who both missed the playoffs last season, will begin to test that theory Wednesday night as the Canucks host the Flames in the National Hockey League season opener for both teams.“We are really young,” Vancouver center Bo Horvat, who was named an alternate captain Tuesday, told reporters. “We know where we are at. We know what people are thinking and saying about us, that we are going to finish at the bottom of the league. But that is great motivation to prove them wrong and a chance to prove ourselves this year.”Article continues below ...Horvat is at the forefront of a Canucks squad that will try to make due without retired Swedish superstars Daniel and Henrik Sedin. And, the Canucks do have plenty to prove after going 1-6 in the preseason.The most notable — and only pure new — young addition is center Elias Pettersson, 19, the team’s 2017 first-round draft choice, who was named the most valuable player in both the regular season and playoffs while guiding Vaxjo to the Swedish Elite League championship last season.Pettersson produced 24 goals and 32 assists in 44 games in Sweden in 2018-19. Canucks management will be ecstatic if he can come close to producing similar production in 82 NHL contests.But Pettersson, a likely rookie of the year candidate, is trying not to put too much pressure on himself after a strong preseason.“I can only control what I do in the moment and not think what’s ahead of me,” the 6-foot-2, 175-pound Pettersson told reporters. “(My game is) getting better every day.”He will be the player without NHL experience in Vancouver’s lineup Wednesday, but the Canucks will give young wingers Nikolay Goldobin, Brendan Leipsic and Tyler Motte opportunities to secure permanent jobs after placing veteran forwards Sam Gagner and Darren Archibald on waivers earlier this week.“With these (other) young kids coming (up through the farm system), this could happen more and more,” general manager Jim Benning said in reference to veterans losing their jobs.Meanwhile, the Flames will feature several new Womens Elias Lindholm Jersey , mostly young faces against the Canucks. Calgary’s newcomers include defenseman Noah Hanifin and forward Elias Lindholm, who were acquired in the trade that sent rearguard Dougie Hamilton and winger Michael Ferland to Carolina, and rookie forward Dillon Dube and first-year defenseman Juuso Valimaki — draft picks who both cracked the team’s roster and will be in the lineup Wednesday.“What (Dube and Valimaki) are going to face (Wednesday) is the hardest competition they’ve ever faced,” Flames general manager Brad Treliving told Postmedia. “This is a real NHL game.”Dube, 19, who hails from the Calgary-area town of Cochrane, Alta., expects that he and Valimaki will be able to handle the hard going of the NHL regular season after they captained the Canadian and Finnish world junior teams, respectively, last winter.“Especially for me being from here, there’s going to be a lot of pressure,” Dube told reporters. “You’re lucky if you get to play with pressure because it’s means you’re in a good city and organization.” COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) The Columbus Blue Jackets played one more playoff game this season than last, but it’s all the same to general manager Jarmo Kekalainen and coach John Tortorella. Not good enough.And apparently there’s plenty of blame to go around.”Everybody has to give skin here, from the coaches right on through, as far as what happened,” Tortorella said in his exit interview with reporters Thursday.The Blue Jackets promising season fizzled out in the end. They overcame injuries to key players and finished the regular season strong, making the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second season in a row. They won the first two in the first-round playoff series on the road against the Washington Capitals, only to drop the next four straight.It ended with a thud in a 6-3 loss in Game 6 on home ice Monday night.Despite how all that sounds, the team didn’t implode, Tortorella said.”We were a good enough team to beat Washington this year Authentic Jaccob Slavin Jersey ,” he said. ”We just did not make that big play and or get that big save at key times, and they did.”I like our team, I like our personnel,” he said. ”The biggest thing is we need to change our mindset here, (so) that we feel we belong in the playoffs. We need to think stronger in how to find a way. I want us to be more aggressive in our thinking and expect some more.”The Blue Jackets undoubtedly will have some different faces next season. Just how many remains to be seen. Kekalainen was coy when asked if the team needs more talented players to get deeper into the playoffs.”We’re always looking to upgrade, one way or another,” he said. ”I think we’re going to get better again from inside. It’s going to be the same approach.”Kekalainen cited the surprise trade last summer that brought star winger Artemi Panarin to town and the swift emergence of rookie center Pierre-Luc Dubois. But he won’t talk strategy.One the goals likely will be to sign Panarin and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky – the team’s biggest stars – to contract extensions. Both will be unrestricted free agents in 2019, and the team would like to lock them up before that.Defenseman Jack Johnson and forward Matt Calvert will be unrestricted free agents on July 1, so the Blue Jackets will have to make a decision on whether to sign them to new contracts. The 28-year-old Calvert, the longest tenured Blue Jacket at eight seasons but never more than a bottom six player, tied his career-high season point total with 24 and had three playoff goals.The Blue Jackets also will have to decide whether to re-sign forwards Thomas Vanek and Mark Letestu and defensemen Ian Cole, all of whom were added at the trade deadline.Columbus finished with 97 points, second most in franchise history after last season’s 108, and qualified for the playoffs as a wildcard. The team punctuated a furious comeback down the stretch with a 10-game winning streak in March.But the playoffs were a bust. Again.”We expected more out of ourselves this year,” defenseman Zach Werenski said on his way out this week. ”Go up 2-0 on the road, come back home we don’t get a win. I just think we have higher expectations, and we should. We are a good hockey team and we fell short of our goals this year. At the end of the day, if you are not holding the Stanley Cup, it’s kind of a failed season. This one definitely stings.”—
